May 10, 2021

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MONDAY

may 10, 2021 high 59°, low 43°

t h e i n de p e n de n t s t u de n t n e w s pa p e r of s y r a c u s e , n e w yor k |

dailyorange.com

C • Coming back

N • Education funding

S • Tournament bound

SU acting seniors talk about difficulties performing in classes during the pandemic and future job prospectives within the entertainment industry. Page 7

New York state is giving $10 million to the Education Opportunity Center to provide job training and development for underrepresented populations. Page 3

Syracuse’s men’s and women’s lacrosse teams earned bids to the NCAA Tournament as part of Sunday’s selection show. The women earned a first-round bye. Page 12

Softball players allege series of abuses by head coach

SHANNON DOEPKING has been the softball coach at Syracuse since fall 2018. Seven former players and one current player who spoke to The Daily Orange detailed verbal abuse and a toxic team environment that they allege Doepking has created. elizabeth billman senior staff photographer

7 former SU players allege hazing, verbal abuse, mistreatment from head coach Shannon Doepking

By Anthony Alandt and Connor Smith the daily orange

Editor’s note: This article includes descriptions of mental health struggles and a mention of suicide.

F

ormer softball player Anya Gonzalez remembers playing in wet jerseys during Syracuse’s 2019 spring break trip to Louisville, Kentucky. Gonzalez was forced to hand-wash the teams’ jerseys, but other former players said they weren’t dried because coaches — includ-

ing head coach Shannon Doepking — didn’t want to hear the dryer all night. As a result, multiple players got urinary tract and yeast infections. Others got rashes and skin infections. Doepking then “shamed” them for having infections and seeking treatment for them, one player said. Others said Doepking didn’t care. “It was the wildest experience of my life,” a former player said. The incident was one of many instances where former players said Doepking crossed a line. Seven see doepking page 4

city

Residents hope I-81 project will reconnect neighborhoods By Maggie Hicks asst. news editor

When Marie Kearse-Ace was young, she spent her afternoons visiting Wilson Park with her friends, eating at restaurants on Harrison Street and roller skating at the rink on Oakwood Avenue — before she was forced to leave. Kearse-Ace grew up in a house that her grandfather built on Renwick Place, where the parking garage for Upstate University Hospital now sits. In her neighborhood, she

recalled grocery stores, hairdressers, youth centers and a sense of community all within feet of her house. “You saw the houses going oneby-one. (Developers) started on Almond Street taking houses. Then, all your friends were moving or preparing to, and then there were only a few left,” Kearse-Ace said. “Then, everybody was gone.” Over 50 years ago, Kearse-Ace, along with 1,300 Syracuse residents, was forced to leave her home so the state could construct a portion of Interstate 81, a highway that splits

through Syracuse’s Southside neighborhood. In the process, the community that residents such as KearseAce knew so well was decimated. New York state is now finalizing plans to remove and replace the deteriorating section of the raised highway — called the I-81 viaduct — with a community grid of surface-level streets in the area. Although the state is still waiting on an environmental review of the project, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said the state plans to break ground on the project in 2022. Residents such as Kearse-Ace said

the community grid should reinstate the connected neighborhood that was destroyed with the construction of I-81, but they fear the project could displace more residents and split up the area once again. “From a community perspective, if we look at this whole thing, (the community grid) doesn’t appear that it’s going to do anything other than cut straight through the neighborhood,” said David Rufus, the community organizer for the I-81 project with the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Our hopes and our dreams

are that there is a possibility that we have a chance to return some semblance of what we lost to these communities back in the ‘50s and ‘60s.” The New York State Department of Transportation and the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council began the official process of deciding what to do with the section of highway in 2011. Cuomo announced in a press release on April 9 that the state’s budget for 2022 will include $800 million for the estimated $2 billion project. see grid page 4


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